Facebook, Instagram under scrutiny over possible breaches of EU digital rulebook

The European Union says it’s investigating Facebook and Instagram over a range of suspected violations of the bloc’s digital rulebook, including not doing enough to protect users from foreign disinformation ahead of EU-wide elections.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said it’s opening formal proceedings into whether parent company Meta Platforms breached the Digital Services Act, DSA, a sweeping set of regulations designed to protect internet users and clean up social media platforms under threat of hefty fines worth up to six per cent of annual revenue.

Brussels has been cracking down on tech companies since the DSA took effect last year, opening investigations into social media sites TikTok and X, formerly known as Twitter, and e-commerce platform AliExpress. TikTok bowed to EU pressure last week and halted a reward feature on its new app after the commission started demanding answers about it.

The investigation includes an urgent request for Meta to provide information about its move to discontinue a key tool for monitoring elections.

“We have a well-established process for identifying and mitigating risks on our platforms,” Meta said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing our cooperation with the European Commission and providing them with further details of this work.”

European Commissioner Thierry Breton said in a social media post that the bloc is probing Meta “for suspected breach of DSA obligations to protect integrity of elections”.

The EU is stepping up measures to safeguard elections as citizens of the bloc’s 27 nations prepare to vote in June for European Parliament lawmakers, amid widespread fears that the latest generative AI systems could be used to disrupt the many votes around the world this year.

The European Commission said it’s looking into whether Meta is doing enough to curb the spread of “deceptive advertisements, disinformation campaigns and coordinated, inauthentic behaviour” that could pose a risk to “electoral processes” and consumer protection.

Officials said they suspected the Meta’s content moderation system for advertisements was inadequate, allowing ads made with generative AI, including deepfakes, to be exploited by malicious foreign actors seeking to meddle in elections, even as the company makes money from them.

The EU also suspects that Facebook and Instagram might be reducing the visibility in recommendation feeds of political content from accounts that pump out a lot of it – a practice known as ‘shadowbanning’ – and not being transparent about it with users, which would violate the DSA.

A third concern is Meta’s decision to phase out Crowdtangle, a tool used by researchers, journalists and civil society groups for real-time monitoring of trending social media posts, including during elections. The commission is giving Meta five days to respond with information on how it will remedy the lack of such a tool.

The commission is also investigating whether Meta’s mechanism for users to flag illegal content is good enough under the DSA, because it suspects it’s neither easy to access nor user-friendly.

AP